Beacon Lights of History, Volume 11 | Page 6

the sheriff;
and Edward III. assented to the request."
I will not dwell further on the origin and maintenance of free
institutions in England while Continental States were oppressed by all
the miseries of royalty and feudalism. But beyond all the charters and
laws which modern criticism had raked out from buried or forgotten
records, there is something in the character of the English yeoman
which even better explains what is most noticeable in the settlement of
the American Colonies, especially in New England. The restless
passion for personal independence, the patience, the energy, the
enterprise, even the narrowness and bigotry which marked the English
middle classes in all the crises of their history, stand out in bold relief
in the character of the New England settlers. All their traits are not
interesting, but they are English, and represent the peculiarities of the
Anglo-Saxons, rather than of the Normans. In England, they produced a
Latimer rather than a Cranmer,--a Cromwell rather than a Stanley. The
Saxon yeomanry at the time of Chaucer were not aristocratic, but
democratic. They had an intense hatred of Norman arrogance and
aggression. Their home life was dull, but virtuous. They cared but little
for the sports of the chase, compared with the love which the Norman
aristocracy always had for such pleasures. It was among them that two
hundred years later the reformed doctrines of Calvin took the deepest
hold, since these were indissolubly blended with civil liberty. There
was something in the blood of the English Puritans which fitted them to
be the settlers of a new country, independent of cravings for religious
liberty. In their new homes in the cheerless climate of New England we
see traits which did not characterize the Dutch settlers of New York;
we find no patroons, no ambition to be great landed proprietors, no
desire to live like country squires, as in Virginia. They were more
restless and enterprising than their Dutch neighbors, and with greater
public spirit in dangers. They loved the discussion of abstract questions
which it was difficult to settle. They produced a greater number of
orators and speculative divines in proportion to their wealth and
number than the Dutch, who were phlegmatic and fond of ease and
comfort, and did not like to be disturbed by the discussion of novelties.
They had more of the spirit of progress than the colonists of New York.

There was a quiet growth among them of those ideas which favored
political independence, while also there was more intolerance, both
social and religious. They hanged witches and persecuted the Quakers.
They kept Sunday with more rigor than the Dutch, and were less fond
of social festivities. They were not so genial and frank in their social
gatherings, although fonder of excitement.
Among all the new settlers, however, both English and Dutch, we see
one element in common,--devotion to the cause of liberty and hatred of
oppression and wrong, learned from the weavers of Ghent as well as
from the burghers of Exeter and Bristol.
In another respect the Dutch and English resembled each other: they
were equally fond of the sea, and of commercial adventures, and hence
were noted fishermen as well as thrifty merchants. And they equally
respected learning, and gave to all their children the rudiments of
education. At the time the great Puritan movement began, the English
were chiefly agriculturists and the Dutch were merchants and
manufacturers. Wool was exported from England to purchase the cloth
into which it was woven. There were sixty thousand weavers in Ghent
alone, and the towns and cities of Flanders and Holland were richer and
more beautiful than those of England.
It will be remembered that New York (Nieuw Amsterdam) was settled
by the Dutch in 1613, and Jamestown, Virginia, by the Elizabethan
colonies in 1607. So that both of these colonies antedated the coming
of the Pilgrims to Massachusetts in 1620. It is true that most of the
histories of the United States have been written by men of New
England origin, and that therefore by natural predilection they have
made more of the New England influence than of the other elements
among the Colonies. Yet this is not altogether the result of prejudice;
for, despite the splendid roll of soldiers and statesmen from the Middle
and Southern sections of the country who bore so large a share in the
critical events of the transition era of the Revolution, it remains that the
brunt of resistance to tyranny fell first and heaviest on New England,
and that the principal influences that prepared the general sentiment of
revolt, union, war, and independence proceeded from those colonies.

The Puritan exodus from England, chiefly from the eastern counties,
first to Holland, and then to New England, was at its height during the
persecutions of